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Entrepreneurs attempting to grow their business are often led to
believe that they should automatically step into a "big"
corporate mode of thought and practice. We have all been
bombarded with theories, models and general advice meant to help
us with negotiating change. But there is a point at which such
advice is not suited for small business. And in all honesty,
corporate execs and managers may talk a good game, but their
efforts to implement new, effective processes and systems are at
best a mixed bag.

Listening to the buzz of popular advice, we can easily forget
that good judgment may at times suggest doing nothing whatsoever,
and that taking a shot with someone else's approach may actually
push us into hot water. While large corporations may attempt to
train people to manage change, they can also blow through a
tremendous amount of money while careening back and forth between
multiple strategies and lines of business. When corporate change
efforts implode, some heads may roll, but the corporation usually
just shakes it off and moves on.

In the face of sweeping innovation all around, management in the
typical large organization is often pressed to engage with
seemingly small, measurable and even fabricated changes that give
the appearance of action. Initiatives that can be easily
quantified are probably satisfying on some level, but
organizations often end up tackling the wrong issues, which
wastes large amounts of money, time and effort.

For example, I worked with a large, well-known tech sector
company that decided to implement self-managed teams. A complete
lack of forethought led to a multi-million dollar change that
clashed with the old corporate culture. Since there was little
rationale or conviction behind the effort in the first place, the
group quickly reverted back to the old model and the company gave
up on self-managed teams altogether.

The logistics of data collection and measurement processes alone
can become overwhelming for stakeholders already tied up in the
main objectives of their business. In the meantime, some of the
most pressing change issues facing an organization are not
readily apparent. And issues that are easy to identify and label
are not necessarily quantifiable issues.

Many crucial matters are often not dealt with or are ignored
altogether because they lack the numbers to get senior management
excited. There is also trouble with what can be known about the
characteristics of a system, participants or the change
opportunity when the act of measurement itself disturbs or
influences that which is being observed and measured.

In resisting the siren's song of corporate lore, what can
entrepreneurs draw from to manage change in their growing
business? For one thing, since your business is small, you
actually have an enviable advantage when it comes to engaging
with change. Hopefully, you have surrounded yourself with
co-workers, partners and customers that have earned and deserve
your trust. Trust them! You talk with them all the time, so be
sure to really listen to them. When they tell you that something
is not working, it is not working, and it is time to consider a
change. Give your team the go ahead to take charge in
implementing and communicating their best solutions.

Since you are a small team, you don't have to allow your business
to fly apart as you conduct studies through multiple
organizational layers, and you don't need to spend hundreds of
hours crunching data. The word of one trusted employee or
customer is enough to initiate a small change.

Many small changes are much better than big, sweeping change
anyway, since small changes can be put into place with little or
no disruption to daily operations that may affect your customers.
If a small change doesn't work after a fair test period, you can
smoothly and easily back it out of the game plan. When it is time
to change, you and your team already have everything that you
need to manage in a way that can teach the big dogs a thing or
two.